Benchmark price for Vancouver homes reaches $1.94m

Benchmark price for Vancouver homes reaches $1.94m

Latest figures from the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver revealed a continuously upward trend for the price of real estate in the region, with the benchmark price for detached homes reaching an unprecedented $1.94 million in January 2016.

This number, which represented 26 per cent growth compared to the same month last year, skewed upwards because a significant fraction of the detached houses had sale values worth millions.

Around 94 per cent of houses sold in Vancouver in 2014 and 2015 were detached homes, and approximately 44 per cent of these properties sold last year were priced at least $2 million, according to Royal LePage. Last month alone, the average price of a detached house in the city was $2.87 million.

Corroborating these numbers, the results of a recent study conducted by city planning program administrator and university researcher Andy Yan found that 32 per cent of detached houses in Vancouver were worth more than $2 million as of July 2015, with an average cost $1.91 million.

“It goes to show that a single-family detached house in Vancouver has become a luxury product,” Macdonald Realty Group managing director Dan Scarrow told The Globe and Mail.

Vancouver real estate’s relatively high price point has made it especially at risk of the B.C. government’s recently enacted legislation on luxury homes, which would slap additional taxes on properties worth more than $2 million.